


Pretense

by 55anon (Anon)



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Gen, M/M, Psychopath AU
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-05-11
Updated: 2016-02-02
Packaged: 2018-03-30 01:21:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3917944
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anon/pseuds/55anon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because no one is that human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Mike

Survey Corps is where they don't have to pretend.

They are all fuck ups, psychopaths, too eager for blood and too dismissive of pain.  The little shits who think this is about  _cause_  and  _purpose_  and  _humanity_  are the ones who get eaten first.

Every so often some fuckwad from Garrison or the MPs will ask to transfer to the Corps.  Mike doesn't pay attention to the ones looking for the scent of adventure.  They'll find their honour soon enough.  He looks for the ones who no longer care.  About anything at all.

Erwin, the sly fuck, convinces brass to conscript certain  _undesirables_  into Corps.

_Look at how successful Levi has been_ , he tells them.   _They would be put to better use fighting for humanity.  I will take personal responsibility._

And the kicker:  _Levi will train them_.

Recruitment is at an all time low-- and yet the squads are never short fighting bodies.

_And if you cannot control them, Commander?_

Erwin doesn't smirk.  Mike does.

_I will control them,_  he replies.

He's is bit of a sociopath himself.

The ones who want death find it.  The ones who don't want death find it too.  Some come into Corps looking for death to spite the military, monarchy-- the system.  Levi sets them straight pretty fucking quick on that score.

_I don't care what you've done or where you come from._ He's got a special flat quality to his voice that makes them pay attention. _You're not here to tell your fucking sob story.  Life doesn't show fuckers like us mercy-- don't expect any here.  In fact, life would probably be more merciful if they'd let you rot in prison.  Consider this another way the world has fucked you over._

_There's only two rules here: kill, or be killed.  Simple.  Easy to understand.  You stay as long as you kill Titans.  You die when you don't.  Any questions._

_What's the other rule?_ some smartass jeers from the latest crop.

Trap.  This is Mike's favourite part.

The idiot doesn't know what hits him-- one moment Levi is on the platform and the next, he's kicking the guy's teeth out.  Feet only, he doesn't like getting his hands dirty.  Everyone immediately backs up, forming a circle around them.  Prison instincts die hard.

The guy tries to fight back but Levi's too quick, always has been.  Sometimes these fucks come with friends who'll try to jump Levi.  Mike really, really hopes this guy has friends.  Stupid friends.  Friends who don't need their teeth.  Hanji will comb the grounds afterward.

Unfortunately, he doesn't.  Have teeth, that is.

_The other rule,_  Levi smiles, grinding his boot into the guy's face,  _is that Smith belongs to me._

It never fails to produce a psychotically focused expression Erwin's face.  Nanaba snorts-- Erwin's too easy.

_Any other questions._

Everyone's on the same page.  Cue.

_Training begins now_ .

Mike, Hanji, Nanaba descend on them.  This is where the real fun begins.

 

 


	2. Mike

You don't need trust to kill Titans.

When they were cadets the officers would go on and on and on about needing to trust your unit, trust the soldier next to you, trust your commander.  The tried-and-true classic for instant Titan meat uses two people, and for some reason this meant that in training, they'd spent a ridiculous amount of time on trust exercises.

Trust has done fuck-all to kill Titans.

More reliable than trust is instinct.  Levi and Erwin design a crash course in Titan killing, tweaked by the squad leaders, which mostly consists of having their new soldiers perform the same maneuver over and over until they can do it in their sleep.

The ones who don't wake up in time to shoot an upswing wire are usually caught by their squad leaders.  It's been a while since Mike has missed, but hey-- he's not perfect.

They don't bother wasting breath trying to break people down to rebuild them as patriots.  Cadet training had spent a lot of time on that too.  Maybe it was necessary for volunteers, but it's not for the condemned.  Forty continuous hours of 3dmg exercises-- the breaking down happens on its own.  Deserters don't get far.  Usually they'd be shot, but Erwin is a sadistic bastard.  He lets Hanji do whatever she wants.

In addition to being their resident Titan expert, Hanji has the uncanny ability to discover a person's deepest fear.  It might be  _why_  she's their Titan expert.

When basic training is finished, Erwin lets his squad leaders pick through the lot.  They don't have a system.  Whoever's had the most losses goes first.  They divvy up the weak ones equally.  Each squad leader aims to cultivate something different.  Nanaba's crew often takes the wagons, so she'll keep an eye out for good drivers.  Hanji's usually put on left flank, so she'll call dibs on the soldiers with left-space orientation.  She's also got a weakness for anyone who can be used as a research assistant-- Mike's exploited this often when they're making personnel trades.

Mike personally likes to keep a good scent balance, he hates fuckers who smell like their blood is already rotting under skin.  He's been known to reject potentially excellent soldiers based on the acrid stench of their freshly bleached uniforms.  Those are the dimwits who usually die their first mission, like they starched themselves for their funeral.  Strategically, Erwin likes to send his squad out for scouting and surveillance.  It's a skill that's always come naturally to him, and in a non-existent ideal world, he aims for a squad which acts like an extension of his senses.  Eyes and ears aren't hard to come by, but touch is invaluable.

Levi, surprisingly enough, doesn't go for the strongest soldiers or the best Titan killers.  He's killer enough for his entire fucking unit-- he's happiest when his squad runs itself.  Between the constant training of new recruits and being Erwin's right hand, he doesn't have time to deal with fights between soldiers or maintaining discipline.  Mike's seen members of Levi's squad watch new recruits, and he'll take their suggestions about who they think will fit in.  A lot of fuckers will show off and "try their best" for Levi, thinking it's some kind of privilege to be alongside the best.

It's not.  Erwin puts Levi and his squad wherever he needs them.  Erwin will change his plans in the space of half a second, and expect Levi to deliver.  Levi has no use for soldiers who don't know how to make their own decisions on the field and simultaneously maintain their mission's objective.  It's a lot to ask when most fuckers forget their field orders because they're shitting in terror.

Most of this is overblown bullshit-- the squad leaders rarely get what they want.  But sometimes the raw materials are there to build what they need.  Mike's used to feeling like he's always operating at 40% capability.  Soldiers die before they fit in with their squad, soldiers die after they've become invaluable specialists.  All the captains have built their own routines for the specific needs of their squad, designed to maximise utility and minimise time needed.  Nanaba in particular loathes training new soldiers to drive wagons in formation.

They're all fucked up, but Erwin is undoubtedly the craziest of them all.  If he were a fanatic, it'd be excusable.  People would understand.  They  _think_  he's a fanatic, and it's why he gets away with half the shit he does.

Erwin's not a fanatic.  Anyone who's seen his face, the one that slips through on rare occasions, has to acknowledge:

Erwin is a  _fiend._

 

 


	3. Hanji

I really like it when people steal food from the mess hall.  I get to use them in my experiments.  Erwin is very good to his squad leaders.  He likes to spoil us-- says it's good for morale and discipline.

Did you know that Titan flesh is edible?

I'm not cruel.  I didn't  _tell_  them that they were eating the fine underskin of our latest captives.  The skin grows back, you know.  Cannibalism is reserved for con-specifics.

Well, they were sent to me for discipline, so I told them afterward.  The little man gets pissed at me if the mess hall's covered in vomit, and the big man won't eat if the smell of bile lingers too long, so I had them clean everything twice.

Did you know that Titans urinate?  They can't have sex, but they can shit and piss.

It makes fantastic bleach.

Even Levi can't complain.

Nanaba pays people to take shovels of horse shit and they'll use it to fertilise the fields.  I think I could make money selling Titan shit, don't you?  Erwin won't let me.  Says I'll start knocking their teeth out to sell them.  But fuck, ivory's rare and fetches a high price in the right places.  No one can tell the difference once it's all carved up.  Just trying to do my bit.

The Wall worshippers-- they go crazy for Titan shit.  Ask for hair and fingernails for fuck-all knows.

We captured a huge Titan once, rolling with skin folds.  I harvested the fat and you could see the layers growing back as I sliced them off.  I still haven't figured out how they do that, especially when we starve them for weeks, but the soap it made was fan-fucking-tastic, so smooth and buttery.  The candles held scent really well.  Levi won't touch anything I give him, says he can't be sure it's not Titan guts.  I don't really see the problem.  I've told Erwin that if he can't rustle up funding for Corps-- not that he'll let that happen, he'd take it as a personal failure, the dumbass-- we can always start supporting ourselves selling candles, soap, and ivory.  Ground up bones make excellent mortar.

You think I'm fucking taking it too far?  Listen, you little shit-- you kill a chicken and use its feathers to stuff pillows, eat the meat off the bone, use the bones to make broth and the fat for frying.  Horses get slaughtered for leather and glue after they're broken from carriage use.  Titans look like humans, sure, but no one's shown that they're human yet.  I haven't found the missing link.  I used to buy carcasses of dead orphans and slice them up-- no better way to learn the intricate human body.

Yeah, Corps is full of psychopaths.

What the fuck did you think you signed up for?

 

 


	4. Erwin

The jeers of the crowd are nothing new.  They don't care about the sobs of mothers and fathers, wives and husbands-- the loudest ones are fake, hired by the Wall Cult to undermine support.  There's one woman they call the Wailer.  She's lost fifteen sons on expeditions.  Imagine that.  A mother so patriotic, all her sons joined Survey Corps.  Every time they come back she's the first one screaming, the material of her dresses getting finer and finer.  Soon she'll have killed enough children for a real necklace made of ivory.

As soon as he became commander, Erwin got rid of the policy to recover the bodies of the dead.  It wasn't hard to convince him.

_Most of these fuckers are from the prisons anyway_. Levi had said. _They don't have anyone who'll mourn them._

_And you?_ Erwin had asked, hand possessive on Levi's ass.

_Don't be a shithead._ He grabbed Erwin's hair and kissed him hungrily.

The bodies tucked in carriages are usually pieces of Titan.  They're lighter than corpses and contain more information.  The Corps doesn't have uses for studying  _human_ weakness.

Eventually, Erwin agrees to let Hanji sell her surplus on the black market.  They cultivate key relationships with certain warehouses who import exclusively to boutiques in Sina.  Erwin couldn't be more pleased with the new source of income.  The soldiers appreciate the increased rations in real animal meat.

The prisoners don't follow Erwin and his expeditions for his good looks-- they follow him because he's a strategist.  It became clear long ago that the most effective way to kill Titans wasn't in broad daylight firing signal flares which gave away every aspect of their position.  The most effective way to kill Titans is at night when they're sleeping, swift and silent, without all the fucking gear.  Hanji's studies on Titans so far have shown they have minimal intelligence or organisation-- Titans don't coordinate, collaborate, or communicate to obtain food and in the absence of humans or other animals, will devour each other.  It's information Erwin has put to good use.

As commander, Erwin radically changed every part of Survey Corps without bothering to notify headquarters.  In the beginning, the strategy was fairly simple.  Squads left camp on rotation.  They left at night, found shelter in treetops or caves or old abandoned buildings during the day, and the following night killed as many Titans in the area as they could.  The following day appeared more Titans, come to feast on the scattered carcasses.  They'd kill as many of those Titans as they could, and the cycle would repeat.  Erwin's commands were simple.  Any sign a Titan had noticed their encampment, they left.  Any sign of a Deviant, they left.  Any lost horses, they left.  In the beginning, they would end up leaving a slaughter site because they'd run out of rations.  Erwin required they bring one tooth for each Titan they killed.

Strategy evolved as they became more successful.  Titans might be dumb, but they retained some instinct to survive.  They eventually stopped going to known slaughter sites.  They stayed away from the walls.  Squads became better at night hunting.  The more successful they became, the more territory they covered.  The more successful they became at killing the easy prey, the more Deviants were leftover.  And there was the problem of publicity-- the  _spectacle_ people expected.  And there was the problem of espionage.  Sina's power players did not like to be played for fools.  They constantly sent agents to spy on Survey Corps.

So Erwin used the daylight expeditions.  It always comprised almost exclusively of prospective squad leaders and new recruits.  The squad leaders-- to prove their loyalty and skill to Erwin.  The new recruits-- to kill any new agents sent to spy on Erwin.  Erwin was uncanny in his ability to identify the moles.  What more convenient way to get them off his back than to abandon them to Titans in a tragic expedition?  So sometimes the stones thrown at Erwin were real stones thrown by really, truly grieved people.  But Erwin was always lost in thought, focused on weeding out the rats and supplying his real squads of Titan killers with new recruits.

Because now, Erwin's real force, comprised of criminals and psychopaths already familiar with night, already trained in silence, already weapons with nothing to lose-- they spend most of their time outside the wall.  Erwin has enough personnel to do that.  Nanaba's squad of wagon drivers travels between encampments, delivering rations, bringing back teeth, delivering messages, bringing reinforcements, mapping the territory they had gained against the Titans, mapping pockets of Titans which slipped past their perimetre.  Hanji's squad has to stay at headquarters-- she has too much scientific equipment.  They'll often go out to hunt the odd Titan who'd crossed the perimetre, bringing it back alive for experiments and soap production.  Levi and Mike's squads train new recruits, flush out moles, and test prospective squad leaders by hunting Deviants.

Erwin's army of former prisoners and psychopaths represents the only real threat to the existing Sina power structure.  He knows this, they know this.  They keep trying to cut him off by the knees by reducing funding under the pretense of the continuously failing "expeditions."  They don't know that Erwin already has a mass of fearless, psychotic killers outside the walls.

Their operations are growing.  Erwin's goal is to secure control of the rivers which supply all the water to the Walls.

So Erwin's expeditions always come back with the grievously wounded, with far fewer people, which the shocked and demoralised.  He disposes of them-- back into the Walls.  No one knows what goes on outside the walls.  No one knows what happens in an expedition.  The traumatised can only relive the horror and trauma of being attacked by Titans.  The rats, the spies, the Sina moles die.  The squad leaders stay insanely focused on killing their Deviant and proving their worth to a soldier who, legend has it, cut Levi out of the stomach of a Deviant himself.  And Erwin's core command-- Mike, Levi, Nanaba, Hanji-- they'll never tell.

The prisoners who live outside the walls, who live only because they kill Titans-- they become fanatically loyal to Erwin.  Because Erwin gives them freedom.  Radical, complete freedom.  No one knows what they do outside the walls.  No one punishes them, no one orders them, no one polices them.  Erwin doesn't give a fuck what they do, so long as they keep killing Titans and sending back teeth.  He respects their skills.  He sends them grain, salted meat, sugar, coffee.  New blades, explosives, canisters of gas.  They stand before an unbounded sky.

Outside the walls, it's a different world.  They stand as equals.

That's why they keep killing.


	5. Levi

Hanji's a shithead, but she's got her uses.  We already knew a few things about Titans: that they sleep at night, that they're sensitive to sound, and that they eat humans.  Really basic.  Some idiot years ago gave a shot at night ops and shite his pants when they failed.  So they decided-- like most military idiots-- that night ops couldn't work  _at all_.  Better than that, they decided that Survey Corps should fight  _only in daylight_ and use fucking  _flares_ to communicate our positions to each other-- and every other fucking Titan in the region.

Before Erwin, there was no war on Titans.  Survey Corps was a military formality for officers aspiring to make rank in Garrison or MP.

Hanji's experiments were really fucking useful.  Before Erwin was commander, he was her captain and squad leader.  They never got permission to capture a Titan alive-- Erwin knew it would never happen.  But he got permission to carry out night missions, and in those early days, he and Hanji did some really fucking important experiments.  Hanji tested their sensitivity to sound and vibration.  More tactically important, she tested their night sensitivity to touch.

Could they, for example, climb onto a Titan from the ground?  How sensitive are their feet?  Their hands?  Shoulders, back, calves?  Could they safely land on Titans jumping from trees?  Could they kill a Titan silently, without waking up all the others in the area?

All things which make night ops possible.

When you stop thinking about how fucking big Titans are and start thinking about exploiting weaknesses, it becomes pretty fucking clear that night ops give humans a huge fucking advantage.

That's the only reason why I agreed.  Otherwise, I might as well have crawled back to Underground and dissolved into those shadows.

Erwin's  _only_ passion in life is to find better ways to kill more Titans.  I  _own_ him because I kill Titans.

We knew night ops would work when I slaughtered fifty Titans in one night.

Turns out, Titans are pretty much impervious to pain.  Which means they can't feel shite.  You can silently kill a Titan in their sleep.  In the beginning, we'd kill Titans and try to make it back to camp before dawn-- put us at a huge disadvantage in terms of distance we could cover.  It was an accident to discover one morning, fucking terrified for our lives and breathing with our hands covering our mouths up in the trees-- Titans eat their own.  They didn't even notice us in the trees, they were so busy devouring the carcasses.

Which answered Hanji's question-- what do Titans  _eat_ when there aren't humans around.

Where they come from-- still have no idea.  They don't fuck, no one has ever seen a pregnant Titan.  We've never seen babies grow to adults and adults grow to old senile shites.  If they fucked, that would be another distraction we could use to kill more Titans.  Hanji would fucking lose her mind if we ever discovered a Titan foetus.  I've been spending too much time around her.

The obvious question after that mission-- which distracted Erwin for weeks and led to the shittiest sex I've ever had with him-- if Titans don't fuck and if they eat each other, shouldn't they, with enough time, eat themselves out of existence?  Erwin doesn't say what he thinks.  Too many rats crawling in camp, reporting to shitheads in Sina.  Hanji's convinced there's a nest of Titan babies somewhere we haven't found yet.  It's one of Nanaba's top mission priorities-- keep an eye out for anything that looks like Titan eggs or whatever the fuck they come from.  Mike thinks Deviants might hold the answer.  Deviants are smarter and fuck as hell hard to kill.  They might be the adult form, and we're surrounded by Titan babies.  And Hanji hasn't been able to study a complete Deviant.

We haven't seen a Deviant with a dick or a pussy, but they're fucking weird as shite anyway, so it doesn't mean anything.

If Deviants are adult Titans and we're only surrounded by thousands of their babies, we're all fucked.  All the more reason to kill every Titan we can.

We've cleared a perimetre which covers a fourth of Wall Maria, the furthest camp five nights out.  Erwin and his twisted politics-- standing orders are to kill every Deviant and let one out of every twenty Titan through the net.  Brass would be suspicious if there were  _no_ Titans trying to climb Wall Maria.

Erwin doesn't say where he thinks Titans are from.  He's not holding out much hope for a nest.  I should let someone else have him, he's been such a shitty fuck.  Then I wouldn't have any real soap.  Erwin buys me the real shite, not the stuff Hanji produces in her labs of Titan fat.

Sometimes, all it takes to start a war is to ask the really obvious questions.

I don't flush out the rats-- Mike does.  They come from Sina, covered with 'new imported boutique soap.'  Hard to cover the stink of Titan.  He'd execute Hanji for conspiracy and high treason if he could.

Bought out prisoners aren't hard to spot.  Erwin saw me coming from a mile away, and I'm no fucking amateur.

Sometimes Nanaba brings news of some fuck who slipped through our nets, caught by his squad leader and executed as bait.

That's why the squad leaders have to kill a Deviant.  Killing a sleeping Titan is easy.  You get used to it after a while.  Especially now, that Hanji's made canister silencers?  A fucking child could do it.  Killing a Deviant in broad daylight with flares blasting your location to every Titan in the region?

Erwin has squad leaders cut out the rounded stump where a cock or pussy would be.  Deviant quota.  Hanji has her assistants sort through them, examine them for any sign of reproduction.

There's always a hole for Titan piss, but never one with evidence of sex.

Fuck I'm hard.  Gotta find Erwin and make him beg for it.

He fucking owes me.


	6. Hanji

I don't understand the appeal of it.

Really.  Levi and Erwin are fucking like there's no tomorrow-- they never forget things echo oddly on base-- Levi likes showing off.  Must be because he used to be a poor gutter rat before Corps found him.  Didn't have anything worth showing off before then.

Anyway, I have my fair share of admirers.  They send me wonderful little gifts.  One squad leader, Yethro, gave me the finest specimen of Titan ear-bone I've ever seen.  It was a malleus, and the handle so finely shaped.  Not hollow like most other Titan bones are, which I think accounts for part of their surprisingly sensitive hearing.  Some people send the usual rings of iris-- one gave me a perfectly preserved lens they'd managed to cut out.  I have more Titan kidneys than I know what to do with.  Most of these prisoners think it's the heart-- they never had lessons in anatomy.  I once got a gallbladder, complete with stones.  That was exciting!  I sold the stones, passed them off as gems, and that alone got us a year's worth of new uniform shirts.  Erwin was so happy he kissed me.  It was slimy and moist.  I wiped it off.  Levi thought it was hysterical.

Sometimes the kidneys have stones too.  I save those and sell them, but they don't fetch as high a price.  Usually now I just have one of my assistants grind up the meat and feed the town dogs.  We get whole packs emerge from nowhere, come for dinnertime.  I don't know how it became a tradition, but the new squad leaders, the ones that survive-- sometimes they manage to get a slice of Deviant.  They'll offer pieces of it to a dog, and when it's time for deployment, they'll take the dog with them.  Dead useful to have a dog in camp.  There's been plenty of times when watch failed and the dog was only thing that saved a squad.  If you get the right one, they'll protect the squad leader too.  Mutiny isn't uncommon out there in the fields-- they can't all be Erwins who have fanatic lovers.  Useful also if the dog turns on them.  Alerts the squad that the leader needs to be killed.

The only thing about the dogs is that their barking strikes just the right notes in a Titan's ears, can bring an entire squad of hardened fighters down.  Having one that howls at the moon is like shooting a flare.

Moblit is nice enough.  He asks useful questions and doesn't complain about the work.  Half of managing my gang of assistants is finding ways to convince them to do something they usually don't want to do.  Levi and Mike prefer their "stern discipline" face, but I pick my assistants because they all have a spark of curiosity in them.  Turning them into Titan killing drones defeats the whole point!  And some of my assistants are really productive-- I have an entire division devoted to producing soap.  I have another which sorts through all the teeth and passes it off as ivory.  Being a squad leader is tough!  There's the weapons division which does boring things like modifying sharp bits of metal to make them sharper.  Of course I have a division for live Titan care and maintenance.  Everyone cuts their teeth on that, because it's the heart of my entire operation!  I mean, yes, I starve the Titans but they don't need to eat.  We'd take the precaution of pulling their teeth, if they didn't grow more teeth back.  Interestingly-- if you starve a Titan long enough, they'll still grow a tooth, but its quality will be vastly degraded.  You'd never be able to pass it off as ivory-- it breaks with the slightest pressure.  It's why every squad still has a tooth quota.

I tried making ceramics out of ground teeth, someone else did a bit of a weaving experiment with the hair.  The ceramics were a bust, but the hair we now proudly use as part of the 3dmg.  Nothing better than finely woven Titan hair to make a lightweight, durable, almost invisible and infinitely long string.

I read in one of those forbidden books Erwin proudly displays in his office-- I still can't wrap my head around his political motivations for doing that-- something complicated about spying, he's explained it before-- anyway.  I read that there used to be tribes of humans who would subsist off one animal, and use every single part to survive.  I really want to make Survey Corps like that tribe.  All the skin scrapings we've collected can be tanned and used to replace leather straps, saddlebags, shoes.  I'll sell the earwax as shoeshine.  If what Erwin says is true and Sina is trying to shut us down, the only answer is for the Corps to become self sufficient.  Even capturing two Titans would be enough to produce a month's worth of soap and leather goods.  There's plenty of cobblers who'd kill for cheap leather.

But what I really want-- what I'm really hoping one of my admirers will send me-- is a Titan foetus.  Or even samples of afterbirth.  Some chippings of an eggshell, or the umbilical cord.  I wonder if Titans eat the umbilical cord, like dogs.  Or maybe Titans deposit their eggs in other Titans and the children when they're born eat the host.  I'm not talking from a production side.  Moblit sometimes looks at me as though I've betrayed science, with all my industrial production.

At the core, I'm practical.  I found out the information we needed first.  It was obvious to me and Erwin that night ops were our best chance.  But it was also obvious we needed information.  I love science and my heart melts at the thought of getting my hands slicked up with a real Titan's heart.  Did you know it continues beating for hours even after it's been removed from its host?  But I'm a cold tactician first when it comes to knowledge.  We all are, in our own way.

Don't be worried about finding your niche in my labs.  There's always kidneys which need to be ground to feed the dogs, and Titan blood that needs to be collected.

Moblit's invented a thing he calls a centrifuge-- found it in one of Erwin's books.  The books say that blood isn't made of just one thing, but of many parts.  If you spin it down, you get what's called a  _serum_.  So far, the red blood cell content we've gotten in the samples is so huge, we've got practically nothing for serum.   _Haemo-concentrated_ , that's what the book says.  But they say, in the books-- the serum's the most interesting part.


End file.
